The lack of legal protections for women and the role of the Cuban state in perpetuating gender violence are in the spotlight after several women accused singer-songwriter Fernando Bécquer of sexual abuse.
Five women told independent online magazine El Estornudo that the musician sexually abused or harassed them in separate events between 2002 and 2012, when they were younger and attended concerts and venues popular with university students in Havana. According to their claims, Bécquer followed a similar pattern and hid behind the Afro-Cuban religion to persuade them that they needed “a consultation” or “a cleansing,” Santería rituals that he used as a lure to later subject them to sex acts.
After the article’s publication, several other women filed formal complaints with the police or the Attorney General’s Office, Lilliana Balance, one of the five women who shared her experience for the original story, told el Nuevo Herald.
“I want to believe that the authorities are going to investigate,” said Balance, 37, who now lives in Pennsylvania. “It is their duty to do it. The prosecution has to proceed with this case. Fortunately, there’s social media, and many women have seen themselves portrayed in that story and they already know that they can denounce [him].”
Bécquer did not answer calls by the Miami Herald to his cellphone. A woman who did not identify herself briefly answered a call to the landline of his mother’s apartment in Havana.
Before hanging up, she said: “We are not interested in giving you an interview. He does not have to make any statements because each and every one of the accusations are false and there is not a single proof.“
But as the days go by, more women have gone public with similar claims. Massiel Carrasquero told CiberCuba that she had to physically confront Bécquer and flee from his mother’s apartment, which she visited for work reasons. The events occurred seven years ago, she said, and at that time the police did not allow her to file a complaint. Writer Elaine Vilar Madruga also said that she would formally accuse the musician of abusing her when she was 17.
Although it is not the first, the most recent Cuban #MeToo moment has become a test for the island’s authorities, which for years have resisted the approval of a law against gender violence or defined it as a specific crime in the penal code. After the Bécquer affair, hundreds of comments published on social media have revealed a decades-long climate of tolerance by the Cuban state in the face of sexual assaults on women and minors in public transportation, schools, cinemas and other public spaces.
In addition to the public uproar, the case presents an additional challenge for the authorities because Bécquer usually participates in political events organized by the government. In his most recent concert, he told Diario de Cuba that he did not give credibility to the accusations: “I don’t believe anything, I believe in the Revolution.” In various statements on social media, several male musician friends dismissed the allegations, calling them “women’s shenanigans” or a “counterrevolutionary” plan because they were first published in an independent media outlet, and some of the alleged victims live abroad.
Balance said that she first tried to contact the official news outlet Cubadebate.
“It is very difficult. Nobody knows all the things that one is going through at any given moment that prevent you from speaking out,” she told the Herald. “When women feel ready to talk and do it, it’s terrible that so many people come out to mix that with politics and distort the main message, which is nothing more and nothing less than [he is] an abuser.”
Despite attempts to politicize the complaints, some institutions such as the Pablo de la Torriente Brau Center, which promotes singer-songwriters such as Bécquer, made statements on social media in support of the women who decided to share their experiences.
In a sign that the issue has generated so much debate that the state media cannot completely ignore it, a week after the publication of the first complaints, the official Communist Party newspaper Granma reproduced a statement from the Federation of Cuban Women, FMC, in which, without naming the alleged victims or the accused, the organization addresses the case.
“A few days ago, the alarms sounded: Several women told their life stories when they were sexually abused, and although the years have passed, the wounds remain open,” the statement says. “These are very painful stories. They show the hairy face of machismo and confirm it. It is up to them and Cuban justice to prosecute the legal case with enough evidence to find the truth of such a regrettable event.”
Official organizations such as the FMC and the National Center for Sex Education, CENESEX, led by Mariela Castro, Raúl Castro’s daughter, have carried out some public campaigns to address the issue and advocate for the approval of a new family code. The FMC said it would offer support to Vilar Madruga in her case against the musician.
But activist groups fighting to draw attention to gender violence believe that the current mechanisms to support victims are not enough and that organizations such as the FMC respond to a government agenda. A group of activists created the #YoSíTeCreo [I do believe you] platform in June 2019 to offer legal and psychological advice to women who have gone through these experiences.
“We have to get to that point where we practice active listening, a real #YoSíTeCreo, without question, and ask [abused women] what you need, how I can help you,” said Cuban journalist and feminist activist Marta María Ramirez. “Without that, as a society, as institutions, as citizens, #MeToo will continue to be silenced by state organizations with other interests.”
“I hope that this one does not get silenced and that they do not hijack it so easily,” continued Ramírez. “This damage that these women have experienced, this public exhibition without real and effective support networks, right now it has to serve a purpose.”
Balance said that one of the reasons she did not speak up earlier was the absence of a support system.
“I think of myself a few years ago and I wouldn’t have gone to the FMC anyway,” she said. “You feel like they were always going to say ‘no.’ For a long time, I had no way to communicate with other women who could have gone through the same thing. That was another impediment for me to speak.”
The government did not listen to a November 2019 request, signed by 40 academics, activists and journalists, who asked to include the drafting of a comprehensive law against gender violence in the legislative schedule of the National Assembly. Instead, the government published earlier this month a “Comprehensive Strategy for the Prevention and Attention to Gender Violence and in the Family Setting.” Without offering a specific date, the document says the government will evaluate “the relevance of designing a comprehensive law.”
“True political will would express in a comprehensive law against sexist violence and a family code to avoid everything we are seeing: the feminization of poverty, brutal in Cuba,” said Ramírez. “And that there is not a woman in Cuba who does not know that there is a women’s movement that has said ‘enough, it is over,’ and that she knows that she is not alone.”
Cuban authorities have not yet said whether they will investigate the allegations. The Attorney General’s Office did not respond to an email with questions sent by the Herald. Neither did the Ministry of Culture nor the Cuban Institute of Music, two institutions that oversee the state music agency Bécquer is affiliated with.
Three lawyers from the legal aid organization Cubalex — Laritza Diversent, Giselle Morfi and Alain Espinosa — agreed that the women’s claims suggest the commission of “sexual abuse” and “lewd abuse,” considered minor crimes with sentences between three months to one year, or several fines. The lawyers added that threatening, deceiving victims using religion and taking advantage of their vulnerability can be seen as aggravating circumstances.
If several women come forward, the sentence could be harsher, said Diversent, the director of Cubalex.
“The lack of reporting and identification of such abuses is more linked to the lack of rule of law and the naturalization of state violence and the lack of access to justice and effective legal protection” in Cuba, Morfi said.
The lawyers believe that other musicians close to Bécquer and who supposedly had knowledge of his actions could also be denounced for the crime of “breach of the duty to report.”
The women’s claims show “the patriarchal structure of the system... the lack of credibility in the state institutions to protect them and, above all, that they were not going to be believed,” added Espinosa.
Balance said that thanks to living abroad, she has seen the impact of women’s movements like the #MeToo in the United States and “escrache” [scratch] in Argentina.
“From now on, women are going to denounce” sexual abuse, she said. “I don’t think that’s going to stop, and that in some way can put a limit on all those men and public figures and make them stop. This can educate women more.”
